28 August 2012

Divemaster Internship Week 2


Wow - it was busy, and then quiet and then busy again.  I was very busy in assisting with an open water course with 4 people for the first few days.  The first open water dive was quite an experience.  We finished the confined water skills for the 4 open water students and a Discover Scuba Student (a single introductory dive for people who just want to see if diving is for them) and then headed off to deeper waters to take them on their first dive.  So we had 5 students between the 2 of us.  No sooner than the instructor would help one of the students start swimming underwater near the corals than another one (who'd previously been swimming quite comfortably underwater) would pop up to the surface (okay we were only at 3m) and then to make things even more fun 2 of the students got bored and decided to go off exploring on their own and I was banging my tank to try and get their attention to stay with the group.  Fortunately the rest of the course went off pretty uneventfully.  

16 August 2012

Divemaster Internship Week 1

I arrived on the island of Malapascua a week ago to start my Dive Master Internship with Evolution Divers I’ve had my Open Water certification since 2003 and have been diving pretty regularly since moving to Singapore in 2008 and have logged over 160 dives in the process and visited some of Asia’s most beautiful spots (with an infinite number left to travel to).  I’d spoken to a number of fellow divers about where to progress to in my diving and had heard horror stories about DM courses where you are treated as a general dogsbody and put into the most extreme situations to find out how you react under pressure.  Now as I like my diving to be as gentle and stress free as possible it has taken me a while to change my mindset to take on a professional certification where I am now responsible for the well being and enjoyment of others.  On deciding to take the plunge I canvassed my friends to find a dive shop in a location with interesting diving that also had a strong commitment to safety and where I would be learning exactly how things should be done as well as getting a wide range of experience with customers from open water and discover diving courses to leading experienced divers on dives to explore the area and Evolution Divers seemed to fit the bill.